READ: Patti Davis Writes ‘This President Will Never Offer Comfort, Compassion or Empathy to a Grieving Nation…So I Have a Wild Suggestion: Let’s Stop Asking Him’

Patti Davis—daughter of late President Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan—wrote in an OpEd for The Washington Post that President Donald Trump is incapable of providing comfort after tragedy.

Davis, an author and actress, stated:

“This President will never offer comfort, compassion or empathy to a grieving nation. It’s not in him. When questioned after a tragedy, he will always be glib and inappropriate.”

She added:

“So I have a wild suggestion: Let’s stop asking him. His words are only salt in our wounds.”

She wrote of her own father’s words after the Challenger space shuttle disaster. Davis also reflected on the words of President Bill Clinton after the mass shooting at Columbine, President George W. Bush after 9/11 and President Barack Obama after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook.

Davis recalled:

“Ronald Reagan has not been the only president to offer comfort and solace to a grieving nation…. Each spoke eloquently, with somber compassion and with reverence for the pain of the victims and the shock of a saddened country.”

“Our grief was reflected in their eyes. We didn’t doubt that their hearts were breaking along with ours.”

But she found the 45th President’s compassion and empathy lacking in his responses. Davis wrote:

“Now, after a week of fear, with pipe bombs being sent to a list of people whom President Trump has said horrible things about, and to CNN, which he consistently targets, 11 Jewish citizens were slaughtered in their place of worship on the Sabbath.”

“Trump’s response? He joked that he almost canceled an event because, after having to speak to reporters about the shooting in the rain, he was having ‘a bad hair day’.”

“Yes, I know, he first read what was scripted for him and called the act ‘evil’. But he has also called Democrats, others who oppose him and the news media evil. The word doesn’t hold much meaning coming from him.”

Davis took exception to the President’s repeating of a known National Rifle Association (NRA) talking point after mass shootings: their “good guy with a gun” suggestion. In her OpEd, Davis wrote:

“After 11 worshippers were gunned down, massacred because they were Jewish, Trump said there should have been an armed guard inside. He said the death penalty should be toughened. And then, later, he made his joke about having a bad hair day and tweeted about a baseball game.”